Qualcomm video promo takes aim at MediaTek; it's not the quantity of cores, it's the quality

So what is better, the quality or quantity of cores on a processor? If you listen to Qualcomm, it is the quality of the cores. In a video that calls to mind Guitar Hero, Qualcomm says that 17 of the top 20 apps in China use no more than 2 cores. Qualcomm's point is that apps need faster cores, not more cores. Additionally, Qualcomm says that with each generation, Snapdragon CPU cores are rebuilt while the competition chooses to copy the same old cores.

According to Qualcomm, the current generation Snapdragon has 170% faster CPU performance than the OG Snapdragon chips. While specs fanatics like to talk about the CPU, it makes up only 15% of the Snapdragon SoC which also includes the GPU, 4G LTE, DSP, Camera and Connectivity.

Why does Qualcomm feel the need to discuss quality vs. quantity of cores? Well, it might have to do with the MediaTek MT6592, the world's first true octa-core processor. Unlike the Samsung Exynos, which only has one group of four cores active at any given time, the MediaTek MT6592 uses all 8 cores at once. Mass production is scheduled for November.

Meanwhile, kudos to Qualcomm for producing an entertaining and quite visual video that gets its point across in a way that is perfectly suited to the demographic it is trying to reach.

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Ahh this is the beauty of the market. You see even though Qualcomm has a good name and produces (most probably) faster chipsets, manufacturing costs and threshold performance are also taken into consideration, therefore a lot more people may invest into the octocore due to cost reduction and possibly an even better battery life ;)

octocore is ridiculous, it sure sounds fun and awesome but it such an overkill.
android doesnt even use octocores. let alone other apps. we are now getting a few apps that use more than 2 cores.
Qualcomm needs to address how to reduce the heat produce from those cores. qualcomm is better than others but they can improve on it more.

Soon we'll have a mini supercomputer in hand in form of a smartphone running peta flops of data. On the other part I feel sad for Qualcomm that they had to push themselves to explain that their processor is better than Mediatek which actually never bragged its competition over Qualcomm or Exynos! Strange fact is that the giants can also be insecure.

It's not really about being insecure. They make a point about the power of each individual core vs the number. Not only are heavily multithreaded cores harder to program, but will be exponentially harder to debug and maintain as well. No developer wants to go through that. Through the PC era, developers didn't need to optimize their code because the hardware performance leaps carried them... they don't have that luxury now that people want crazy performance out of hardware 1/8th the power of an average modern desktop.

This is why Intel was ahead and AMD was behind. AMDs FX series outperformed Intel in niche applications involving heavily multithreaded code -- some of the most sophisticated software around. For everything else (aka 99% of average developers coding at best for dual core) Intel saw better performance because each individual core was stronger.

Especially for phones, at least for now, its better to save the die space and remove some cores and stick with dual core. Extra cores are subject to diminishing returns and when most software is at best dual core-optimized, comparing a dual core Snappy vs a octa core Mediatek is like comparing two dual cores when it comes to real life usage -- only except one will have way weaker individual cores.

Yeah they will but we'll never see it in the US their having issues with their octa core thats why only 20% of note 3 will have it and 80% will use snapdragon 800. To many promises for samsung that dont deliver.

But in EU and South East Asia (including China) Mediatek is selling more chips than Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Samsung combined. So maybe it's pointless for Qualcomm to out this video since they have totally different markets. Or probably this is aimed at Samsung's dual-quad "octa-core"?

And this is the "single thread performance" I have been talking about. Most applications don't go over 2 threads, so more than 2 cores is already plenty.
8 cores with low performance each? Just a joke to fool ignorant people. Give me A15 or Krait400 cores with a good GPU and I'll be much better served.

13.taikucing (unregistered)

"The CPU is just 15% of the Snapdragon processor."
Yeah. So true. CPU is very important, but there are other things that are also important too like GPS. As a mediatek phone owner, I tell you, the GPS which is carried by mediatek is useless & crap. It's very difficult to get the position even for hours. It's so frustating while you need to know where you are now but the GPS is not working. Many mediatek phone users I've met in the forums share the same GPS problem too, no matter what types of mediatek CPU they have, 1 or 2 or 4 cores. They sucks in GPS. And it doesn't have compass too.

Android have to optimize their OS in such a way that even a single core or less than that would be able to perform smoothly, otherwise specs hungry people will go for octa, 16 32, 64 cores and so on and it will never end.

It's actually not a userland issue but rather depends on how the underlying Linux kernel was compiled and with what parameters in mind. Then comes the choice of scheduler (IKS and GTS). Actually those high end devices with kernel 3.4.y can already manage cores efficiently at the kernel level, moreover the Dalvim VM already takes advantage of multiple cores. It's just up to Apps to harness cores.

Quad core is more than enough for smartphones... The apps have to push it. That is why I didn't stay in the Android bubble... Lots of gimmicks and features I never even use... Not to mention the work you have to put in to get the most out of it and/or make it stable

unlike the PC market with games like crysis that make your current rig scream and force you to upgrade your specs... Android doesn't have any of that

where is the crysis for android? Where is the justification for more specs?

it is really telling when a dual core performs smoother than an octocore

android is nothing but specs specs specs specs specs that go unused

I used to enjoy tweaking and customizing my device to the last iota but now I'm just satisfied with something that just WORKS

It will be great to deliver octo core power and make it work all that power will come in handy for video editing on the fly with these devices ,but quality cores are needed and power per core I guess this is why Intel still boasting its dual core with broad power to out perform any quad core because it has multi threading don't believe these chips have multi threading this is why they want more cores.

Im not denying the lag exist. It's just not as apparent as most fanboys make it seem. They act like their own os CAN'T lag because it's powered by their ego. It really is a weak and old argument and im tired of seeing it. I have a dual core 1.5ghz device. I can clock it down as low as it can go and it's still very usable to a point you wouldn't even notice it's slightly slower than is should be. This is on a stock rom btw.

As a programmer I know it is relatively easy to use multiple cores with very little worry about concurrency issues. OpenMP is practically a standard, especially when you want to speed up slow portions of your program. I've used this before and I know many others do to easily take advantage of all the cores in a system. It allows you to code as if you are using a single thread but end up using every core in the machine.

Now if you wanted full fledged threads, each with their own unique purpose... that is a different story. That kind of threading is very application-specific and can be quite significantly harder to utilize all the cores.

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